Communication is the Oxygen for Execution
The one thing any school leader never wants to happen is a failure to communicate clearly.
When it comes to communicating the mission, vision, goals and values, and expectations, a leader must consistently communicate with clarity.
Here is the rule we start from: Once you’ve talked about your mission, vision, values and goals, a hundred times, the average employee has heard and understood it less than ten.
Shocking, right?
But it’s true.
One of the great failures of school leaders happens when they think everyone else ‘just gets it.’
They don’t.
That is assumptive leadership, and it is the most dangerous leadership style.
As a school principal, you may be passionate and inspired by your mission and vision. Compelled by your WHY! It's the reason you jump out of bed every day ready to change the world.
Here is a newsflash.
Most of your teachers and employees do not.
To bring them into the mission and vision you created, it must be shared.
Constantly.
Relentlessly.
Effectively.
Besides mission and vision, here are four other areas a leader must tirelessly OVER-communicate on (this means everyday, multiple times per day, in fact, every time you are with your team). Clarity on what each of these looks and feel like is key.
Mission: Why your organization exists. It is the lens in which ALL decisions should be filtered through.
Vision: Where are we going? What is the destination?
Values: How we will behave. How we will treat each other. How we will carry ourselves and represent the organization.
Goals: What are the measurable outcomes we are looking to achieve (short and long term).
Strategy: How we will work together to execute those goals.
Expectations: What is expected of each member of the team. The written and unwritten rules of our organization.
Remember, it's alright to be uncertain. But it is never alright to be unclear.
To be unclear, is to be unkind.
Your Call to Action: One of the exercises I have the principals that I support complete is to journal, for ten days, the vision of their school operating at an elite level.
What would students and teacher experience? What would the classrooms look and sound like? What would be the experience of a guest when they arrive to your school. When they call or visit your web site. What would your parents tell other families about your school?
Each day, start with a blank sheet of paper. By day ten, you will have clarity. Then, unpack all of the details and create yourself a "playbook" to begin communicating and training your team to follow.
To your success,
Tom
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